Sunday, October 30, 2005

Negative fallout of disaster management

Daily Times October 30, 2005
VIEW: Political fallout of relief work —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

Unless the presidency and the army bring the civilian political leaders on board, in a couple of months they will face serious problems in dealing with the negative fallout of disaster management

The people and government of Pakistan are striving hard to cope with the earthquake disaster. The military, voluntary groups, political parties, non-government organisations and individuals have by now covered most of the devastated regions in Kashmir and the NWFP. The contribution of friendly countries and voluntary groups from abroad to the rescue and relief work has also been equally significant. They have provided helicopters, equipment, medical teams and hospitals, medicines and trained disaster-relief personnel.

The rescue and relief work over the last three weeks has raised a number of issues which need to be addressed if Pakistan is to enhance its capacity to cope with disasters in the future.

First, how can the state machinery, including the military, be mobilised expeditiously? Unnecessary delay and administrative confusion increase the human toll of such disasters.

Second, Pakistan must have disaster management arrangements that become operative on the first information of a major disaster — natural or man-made. Necessary technology and trained human power must be available all the time.

Third, a successful relief operation calls for cooperative interaction between the civil administration and the military. While the military clearly plays a crucial role in coping with such tragedies, the civilian establishment must be actively involved in the rescue and relief processes.

Fourth, civil society must be made an equal partner. NGOs and other civil society groups, political and religious leaders and elected representatives of the people should all be associated with the rescue and relief work. They are better acquainted with the area than state functionaries and the volunteers coming from outside. Also, the military and the bureaucracy cannot effectively tackle the political and human issues in the course of disaster management without the participation of the civil society and the elected representatives of the people.

Fifth, relief and reconstruction operations involve financial resources and goods as well as the implementation of rehabilitation and development plans. These affairs should be managed transparently. Details of the donations received and expenditure should be available to the public.

Media reports and comments of volunteers who reached the devastated areas on October 8-9 indicate that the government’s initial response to the tragedy was slow. The senior officials of the federal government took time to realise the scale of the disaster and lacked means to take charge of the affected areas. Leave alone the earthquake-affected areas in Kashmir and the NWFP, the collapse of the Margalla Tower on October 8 exposed the inadequacy of official rescue efforts. In the end a private sector real estate developer brought the machinery for removing the Tower’s debris. The arrival of rescuers next day boosted the rescue work.

The troops reached the calamity-hit areas in 48 to 72 hours and took some more time to start rescue work. It seems that the army followed the conventional procedures for movement of troops that take days rather than hours. Given the enormity of the tragedy, an extraordinary effort was needed. Explaining the delay in terms of damaged roads raises a serious question: what would the army do if India destroyed these roads in a war?

The delay in the army taking charge of rescue and relief operations enabled some opportunist anti-social elements to loot relief goods and steal whatever could be retrieved from the debris.

This critique does not aim to fix responsibility. Rather, it highlights that an early initial response to a disaster is key to successful rescue and relief work. Quick, efficient measures go a long way to cut human losses. The time it takes to respond to a crisis also reflects on the decision-making and organisational and management skills of the government.

President General Pervez Musharraf regretted this delay in his first address to the nation after the earthquake. It was a good statement and contributed to defusing public anger. It is amazing that a week or so later, army circles started arguing that there was no delay. An army helicopter, it was claimed, was sent to the area within half an hour of the earthquake and the troops were mobilised swiftly.

Such claims do not help because the private sector TV channels and the press had reported on the developments of the first three days in detail. The people criticised the army because the latter’s performance did not match their expectations. The high expectations are linked to the military consuming the lion’s share of national resources. Also, military-dominated governments have maintained for years that the military can salvage the situation where civilians fail. Inevitably people asked whether the army’s problematic initial response was on account off the extraordinary circumstances or a consequence of its expanded involvement in non-professional and political activities?

The army has virtually taken over the affected areas and the civil administration has either been rendered irrelevant or subordinated to it. The debates of the National Assembly show that most opposition members are critical of the government’s handling of the relief work. Some members of the ruling coalition too have criticised the government. Their bitterness is expected to increase on being denied a meaningful role in coping with the disaster.

The management of rescue, relief and reconstruction exclusively by the presidency and the army creates another problem. The people will hold the presidency and the army responsible for any deficiency and flaws in relief and reconstruction work. The media is already talking of inadequacy of the relief work.

The NWFP government is complaining about the federal government’s discriminatory policies in allocating resources for relief work. The provincial assembly has passed a resolution asking the federal government to include the elected representatives in the process. The chief minister has regretted that the five districts of the province that witnessed the most devastation were not getting their “due share in financial assistance”.

If such complaints are not tackled at the political level by opening up the disaster management process, grievances will abound. These would increase the alienation of the NWFP which already feels that it has not been paid its fair share of profits from power generation in the province.

A serious political flaw is the inability of the government (president and prime minister) to consult the major opposition parties. Given the opposition’s willingness to cooperate, the government should have pounced on the opportunity for consultation. This did not happen and during the last three weeks the opposition and the government have drifted further apart.

The presidency and the army need to recognise the relevance of the political institutions and leaders to relief and reconstruction work. Unless the presidency and the army open up the process — by bringing the civilian political leaders on board — in a couple of months they will face serious problems in dealing with the negative fallout of disaster management.

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

Views on the US aid to Pakistani earthquake victims

Saltlake Tribune
American aid to Pakistan irks hard-liners
By Matti Huuhtanen
The Associated Press
Salt Lake Tribune

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - The U.S. military has sent helicopters, a field hospital and a construction battalion to earthquake-stricken Pakistan - a gesture that has irritated Islamic hard-liners but may help improve Washington's image in the Muslim world after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
''When they do something against Muslims, we condemn them. Now as they are helping us, we should appreciate them,'' said Yar Mohammed, 48, a farmer in Muzaffarabad, the devastated capital of Pakistan's portion of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir.
''We are facing hard times, and they are helping us.''
The disaster also has given Pakistan and India a new opening for furthering peace efforts that began early last year, particularly over Kashmir, where the neighbors have fought two wars and where Islamic separatists have fought for 16 years against Indian security forces.
Early Sunday, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said the two nations agreed on opening the heavily fortified frontier in Kashmir to improve earthquake relief efforts in the region's two parts, which were the worst hit by the Oct. 8 tremor that killed some 80,000 people and left 3 million homeless.
The border will be opened on Nov. 7 at five points, where relief shipments and civilian Kashmiris will be permitted to cross, the announcement said.
American help in Pakistan started a day after the 7.6-magnitude quake, as the U.S. military immediately started diverting some two dozen heavy-lifting helicopters from its operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a key Washington ally in the war on terrorism and supported the U.S.-led war that ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan, but President Gen. Pervez Musharraf had refused to let U.S. soldiers operate on Pakistani soil during a search for Osama bin Laden because of domestic opposition.
So despite the humanitarian crisis, some Islamic hard-liners have bristled at the presence of U.S. troops.
''There is no need for American forces here. I think our intelligence agencies should monitor the activities of Americans in sensitive areas like Kashmir,'' said Ameer ul-Azeem, spokesman for the Islamic opposition coalition, Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, which governs a province hit severely by the quake.
Analysts say most Pakistanis welcome America's help - particularly its helicopters, invaluable for reaching isolated mountain communities facing the onset of the harsh Himalayan winter.
''Most Pakistanis are grateful for aid coming from any quarter,'' said Khalid Mahmood, a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies in the capital Islamabad. ''This [U.S. assistance] will have a positive effect and will help lessen hostility in the Islamic world to the Americans.''

Give Them Shelter: NYT

New York Times
October 28, 2005
Give Them Shelter
By ALEXANDER SAUNDERS
Garrison, N.Y.

THE earthquake in Pakistan has left millions homeless. Umar Ghuman, Pakistan's minister of foreign investment and a longtime customer of my foundry supply company, has asked me to help find housing for as many of these people as possible before the onset of winter in the next few days.

Tents are not protection enough, and conventional prefabricated houses are neither readily available nor easy to ship. The solution, then, is to think of something less conventional, like the work shed-greenhouse combinations sold at Sam's Club and other retailers. Such sheds - small (882 cubic feet), plastic, weather-tight, insulated and portable - retail for around $2,000. Two hundred thousand of these houses - temporary homes for a million people - would cost less than $400 million.

These sheds come in sections, such that a C5-A military cargo plane could fit hundreds of units on a single flight. The manufacturer can produce nearly 20,000 units per month, but additional new machinery could be developed promptly to speed up production. Although there are many garden structures to choose from, the one that combines both shelter and greenhouse functions is manufactured in Winfield, Kan.

Large enough to house a small family, the work shed and greenhouse, if supplied with water and seed, can also provide bean and alfalfa sprouts as well as other fast- growing vegetables. It can be fitted with solar panels for hot water and electricity. The built-in workbenches are ideal bed platforms.

Once delivered to Pakistan, the house kits could be carried in sections by the region's ubiquitous minitrucks, or even by backpackers or helicopters where mountain villages are inaccessible. An experienced team can assemble the houses in minutes on firm, dry, level ground. Their construction is both rugged and flexible enough to withstand future shocks.

This is an opportunity for the United States to present to the world a product of our manufacturing ingenuity delivered by our military might. The United States needs to regain credibility with its friends throughout the region, and the people there need housing desperately.

How about it, retailers? Can you contribute your inventory to start these houses on their way immediately? How about it, United States Air Force? Will you fly your C5-A's on a humanitarian mission?

We need to do this now, not next week or next month. Winter - with mountain blizzards, powerful winds and subzero temperatures - will come to the Himalayas in days. The commercial air freight system is already shipping blankets, tents and medical supplies. That's a good start, but it is in no way adequate for housing people in winter.

Of course we must remember the needs of our own hurricane victims, as well as the tsunami victims still in makeshift camps. But the winter storms of the high mountains present a mortal threat that demands an immediate response. We have the means. So what are we waiting for?

Alexander Saunders is a founder of Clearwater, an environmental organization.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Pakistan Replays the 'Great Game': Hussain Haqqani

Pakistan Replays the 'Great Game'
Far Eastern Economic Review October 2005

by Husain Haqqani

For over two years, Abdul Latif Hakimi regularly telephoned Pakistani and Western reporters and described himself as the spokesman for Afghanistan's Taliban. He claimed responsibility on behalf of the Taliban for several terrorist attacks. In June, when a MH-47 helicopter was shot down during an antiguerrilla mission in Afghanistan's Kunar province bordering Pakistan, killing all 16 U.S. troops on board, Hakimi reported the incident to the media before U.S. or Afghan officials.
Hakimi's claims were often exaggerated or even totally fabricated. But no one doubted that he was based in Pakistan and that he spoke on behalf of the Taliban.

Hakimi's telephone press conferences and interviews, conducted on satellite and cell phones, offered an embellished version of an emerging ground reality. After being toppled from power in the aftermath of 9/11, the Taliban have reconstituted themselves in part of the Afghan countryside as an insurgent force, especially in provinces dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Since the beginning of 2005, casualties in Afghanistan have been rising. Some 84 American soldiers and 1,400 Afghans have been killed this year, more than any year since the arrival of U.S. forces in 2001. The Taliban insurgency is weak and not yet as threatening as the challenge in Iraq. But Afghan insurgents are clearly getting arms, money and training. Through propaganda of the type waged by Hakimi, the Taliban are also recruiting new members.

When Pakistani authorities announced on Oct. 4 that Hakimi had been arrested in the southwestern city of Quetta, just across the border from the Taliban's traditional support base of Kandahar, officials in Afghanistan were not impressed. Why had it taken the Pakistanis so long to silence Hakimi when he operated freely in Pakistan for over two years, they asked. What about other Taliban leaders who roam the streets
of Quetta and other Pakistani cities and towns quite openly?

Pakistan's decision to arrest the Taliban spokesman was attributed to relentless U.S. pressure. Days before Hakimi's arrest, U.S. officials reportedly raised the issue of the Taliban operating freely in Pakistan during meetings with President Pervez Musharraf in New York.

U.S. officials are usually restrained in publicly criticizing Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, for fear of embarrassing the country's pro-U.S. military strong man, Gen. Musharraf. But last summer U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad questioned Pakistan's commitment to eliminating the Taliban in an interview just before leaving Afghanistan for his new assignment in Iraq. Ambassador Khalilzad wondered why Pakistan's security services could not find Hakimi and
another deputy to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Akhtar Usmani, when they were readily available to the media and occasionally gave interviews to Pakistani television channels.

U.S. and Afghan officials realize that it will be difficult to bring lasting peace to Afghanistan if the Taliban and other enemies of President Hamid Karzai's government continue to find sanctuary in Pakistan. Notwithstanding the high profile arrest of the Taliban spokesman, there is no evidence that Pakistan is about to sever all links with the Taliban or to give up its dreams of a client state in
Afghanistan.

During the war against the Soviets, Pakistan's military leader General Zia ul-Haq had adopted a policy that would bleed the Soviets without goading then into direct confrontation with Pakistan. Pakistani intelligence officers used the metaphor "the water must not get too hot" to describe that policy.

It seems that Pakistan is pursuing a similar policy in relation to Afghanistan today. By allowing the Taliban to regroup and mount insurgent attacks across the border, Pakistan's hopes to make it clear to Afghan leaders such as Mr. Karzai that they cannot stabilize their country without Pakistan's help. At the same time, Pakistan does not want the situation to reach the point of inviting U.S. reprisals.

Ties between Pakistan and the Taliban date back to the founding of the movement in 1994. Then, the Taliban-Pashtun students of madrassas, or Islamic seminaries-rose to end the bitter civil war that had ravaged Afghanistan for almost two years after the collapse of a pro-Communist government. Pakistan had fueled the civil war as well, trying to promote the cause of its client Islamist leaders, especially Gulbeddin
Hekmatyar, who earned notoriety by raining rockets on Kabul in a bid to wrest control of Afghanistan's capital.

Pakistan's role, with U.S. help, as the staging ground for the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1988 is widely known. What is less well known is Pakistan's historic concern with extending its influence into Afghanistan long before the arrival of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan's attitude toward Afghanistan was formed largely by historic developments of the 19th century when Britain and Russia competed for influence in Central Asia in the "Great Game" of espionage and proxy wars.

Concerns about security against Russia pushed the frontier of British India westward and the British lost precious lives in their effort to directly control Afghanistan. Recognizing Afghanistan as a buffer between the British and Russian empires saved both from having to confront each other militarily. By accepting a neutral and independent Afghan Kingdom the British sought to pass on the burden of subduing some
of the tribes the imperialists considered lawless to a local monarch, albeit with British economic and military assistance.

Afghanistan's frontier with British India was drawn by a British civil servant, Sir Mortimer Durand, in 1893 and agreed upon by representatives of both governments. The border, named the Durand Line, intentionally divided Pashtun tribes living in the area, to prevent them from becoming a nuisance for the Raj. On their side of the frontier, the British created autonomous tribal agencies, controlled by British political officers with the help of tribal chieftains whose loyalty was ensured
through regular subsidies. The British used force to put down sporadic uprisings in the tribal areas but generally left the tribes alone in return for stability along the frontier.

Adjacent to the autonomous tribal agencies were the "settled" Pashtuns living in towns and villages under direct British rule. Here, too, the Pashtuns were divided between the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan. Although Muslim, the Pashtuns generally sided with the cause of anti-British Indian nationalism and were late, and reluctant,in embracing the Muslim separatism of the All India Muslim League's campaign for Pakistan. When the majority of British India's Muslims
voted for the creation of Pakistan, the Pashtuns elected leaders who emphasized ethnic pride over a religious national identity.

After Pakistan's independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistani leaders assumed that Pakistan would inherit the functions of India's British government in guiding Afghan policy. But soon after Pakistan's independence, Afghanistan voted against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations, arguing that Afghanistan's treaties with British India relating to Afghan borders were no longer valid because a new country
was being created where none existed at the time of these treaties. Afghanistan demanded the creation of a Pashtun state, "Pashtunistan," which would link the Pashtun tribes living in Afghanistan with those in the nwfp and Baluchistan. There were also ambiguous demands for a Baluch state "linking Baluch areas in Pakistan and Iran with a small strip of adjacent Baluch territory in Afghanistan."

From Pakistan's perspective, this amounted to demanding the greater part of Pakistan's territory and was clearly unacceptable. The Afghan demand failed to generate international backing, and Afghanistan did not have the military means to force Pakistan's hand.

Although India publicly did not support the Afghan claim, Pakistan's early leaders could not separate the Afghan questioning of Pakistani borders from their perception of an Indian grand design against Pakistan. They wanted to limit Indian influence in Afghanistan to prevent Pakistan from being "crushed by a sort of pincer movement"
involving Afghanistan stirring the ethnic cauldron in Pakistan and India stepping in to undo the partition of the subcontinent. Pakistan's response was a forward policy of encouraging Afghan Islamists that would subordinate ethnic nationalism to Islamic religious sentiment.

Pakistan's concern about the lack of depth in Pakistan's land defenses led to the Pakistani generals' strategic belief about the fusion of the defense of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan's complicated role in Afghanistan beginning well before the Soviet invasion of 1979 and through the rise and fall of the Taliban can best be understood in light of this desire.

Pakistan's position as the principal foreign player in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal changed with the arrival of American and NATO forces in the aftermath of Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Pakistan has recognized that changed situation, deferring a great deal to American concerns. But it has clearly not abandoned its long-term national objective of ensuring that the government in Kabul is subordinate to Pakistan's regional agenda.

Pakistan provided crucial logistics and vital intelligence support when the U.S. went to war to topple the Taliban from power. Initially, Pakistan had hoped for a role for some Pakistani clients in the new government in Kabul and had floated the idea of "moderate Taliban" joining the future Afghan government. Although Taliban leaders were completely excluded from the interim government formed in 2001, they
have been allowed by President Karzai to participate in parliamentary elections upon renouncing violence.

But Mr. Karzai and other Afghan nationalists remain unwilling to accept Pakistan's vision of Afghanistan as a subordinate state. Afghanistan maintains close ties with India and expects to pursue an independent foreign policy. Although Pakistan is engaged in a peace process with India, its generals remain fearful of Indian domination. India's size coupled with its economic and military might make its ascendancy inevitable, but that does not deter Pakistan from pursuing options of
low intensity and subconventional warfare for greater regional influence. The decision to continue to back or tolerate the Taliban is part of Pakistan's grand design for positioning itself as a major player
in a contemporary version of the Great Game.

Pakistan will crack down on the Taliban, and give up the option of supporting Islamist insurgents in Indian-controlled Kashmir, only when it finds the cost of positioning itself as a major regional power unbearable. The U.S. could help Pakistan realize the dangers of persisting with its traditional policies by refusing to publicly pretend that it is unaware of Pakistan's regional double-dealing. An
American-brokered accord between Pakistan and Afghanistan to end the latent dispute over the Durand Line, coupled with international guarantees to end Pakistan's meddling in Afghanistan, might be the minimum requirements for durable peace in the region where the 9/11 plot to attack the U.S. was hatched.

Mr. Haqqani is director of Boston University's Center for International Relations, and author of Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment, 2005).

Saturday, October 22, 2005

The Bomb and the Earthquake in Pakistan

The News, October 23, 2005
Capital Suggestion
The Bomb and earthquake relief
Dr Farrukh Saleem

According to the United States Geological Survey, "A major earthquake occurred at 8:50:40 a.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2005. The magnitude 7.6 event has been located in Pakistan."

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was caught sleeping. Our seismologists completely failed to determine the epicentre of the quake and Pakistani authorities were unaware of the real magnitude of the disaster. Our Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, on live TV, assured that the "quake had not caused any major damage." For the following five hours, up until 2 p.m., no one in Islamabad or in Rawalpindi had realised the real gravity of the calamity.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmed wasn't hiding the truth; he simply didn't know the truth. Our seismologists failed not because they are untutored but because they have been set up to fail.

The scientific fact is that "when earthquakes occur near a country's boundaries like the recent one in Kashmir, real-time data from at least three seismographs are essential in locating the earthquake's epicentre (a point on the earth's surface directly above the underground epifocal point where the earthquake originates). The determination of the epicentre in turn can lead to production of ground-shaking intensity maps, which play a crucial role in speeding aid to victims. If such maps had been generated and used during the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake, thousands of victims could have been saved."

Here is the case: There is a very strong connection between the monitoring of nuclear explosions and the monitoring of earthquakes. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine has kept the country away from any global seismic monitoring network, and without joining a global seismic monitoring network we cannot develop an effective post-earthquake-monitoring network. As a consequence, we Pakistanis continue to be extremely vulnerable to the aftermath of earthquakes; no real-time data, no determination of immediate impact, no distribution of damage reports and no effective post-earthquake relief (for the first 24 hours we were concentrating on the collapsed Margalla Towers while a hundred thousand children were buried under debris).

The Global Seismographic Network (GSN) is the most reliable seismological network on the face of the planet. As of 2003, GSN had deployed 128 permanent seismic recording stations uniformly over the earth's surface (eight new stations will be deployed by the end of 2005). GSN is a "university research consortium dedicated to exploring the Earth's interior through the collection and distribution of seismographic data." The governing Standing Committee is composed of Arizona State University, University of California, Pennsylvania State University and Yale University, among others.

Here is the catch: GSN "not only accurately monitors earthquakes at 128 stations worldwide but also assists in the verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by being the ears through which seismic signatures of nuclear detonations are detected by the participating nations."

The Pakistan Meteorological Department is not part of any global seismic monitoring network and is thus deaf, dumb and blind. For the initial crucial hours during which thousands of lives could have been saved, we didn't know the epicentre, we didn't know the distribution of damage and we didn't have any colour-coded ground-shaking intensity maps.

India, for reasons not much different from our own, is not part of GSN either. On October 10, The Indian Express quoted Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science, Technology and Ocean Development, as saying, "India surely needs to network with the global earthquake community. If this requires a rethink on old issues, the Science ministry will request for a re-look on this … issue."

Do our bombs already have Kashmiri blood on them? The magnitude 7.6 event was a natural disaster; a hundred thousand casualties were partly man-made.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist
Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

The Bomb and the Earthquake in Pakistan

The News, October 23, 2005
Capital Suggestion
The Bomb and earthquake relief
Dr Farrukh Saleem

According to the United States Geological Survey, "A major earthquake occurred at 8:50:40 a.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2005. The magnitude 7.6 event has been located in Pakistan."

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was caught sleeping. Our seismologists completely failed to determine the epicentre of the quake and Pakistani authorities were unaware of the real magnitude of the disaster. Our Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, on live TV, assured that the "quake had not caused any major damage." For the following five hours, up until 2 p.m., no one in Islamabad or in Rawalpindi had realised the real gravity of the calamity.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmed wasn't hiding the truth; he simply didn't know the truth. Our seismologists failed not because they are untutored but because they have been set up to fail.

The scientific fact is that "when earthquakes occur near a country's boundaries like the recent one in Kashmir, real-time data from at least three seismographs are essential in locating the earthquake's epicentre (a point on the earth's surface directly above the underground epifocal point where the earthquake originates). The determination of the epicentre in turn can lead to production of ground-shaking intensity maps, which play a crucial role in speeding aid to victims. If such maps had been generated and used during the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake, thousands of victims could have been saved."

Here is the case: There is a very strong connection between the monitoring of nuclear explosions and the monitoring of earthquakes. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine has kept the country away from any global seismic monitoring network, and without joining a global seismic monitoring network we cannot develop an effective post-earthquake-monitoring network. As a consequence, we Pakistanis continue to be extremely vulnerable to the aftermath of earthquakes; no real-time data, no determination of immediate impact, no distribution of damage reports and no effective post-earthquake relief (for the first 24 hours we were concentrating on the collapsed Margalla Towers while a hundred thousand children were buried under debris).

The Global Seismographic Network (GSN) is the most reliable seismological network on the face of the planet. As of 2003, GSN had deployed 128 permanent seismic recording stations uniformly over the earth's surface (eight new stations will be deployed by the end of 2005). GSN is a "university research consortium dedicated to exploring the Earth's interior through the collection and distribution of seismographic data." The governing Standing Committee is composed of Arizona State University, University of California, Pennsylvania State University and Yale University, among others.

Here is the catch: GSN "not only accurately monitors earthquakes at 128 stations worldwide but also assists in the verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by being the ears through which seismic signatures of nuclear detonations are detected by the participating nations."

The Pakistan Meteorological Department is not part of any global seismic monitoring network and is thus deaf, dumb and blind. For the initial crucial hours during which thousands of lives could have been saved, we didn't know the epicentre, we didn't know the distribution of damage and we didn't have any colour-coded ground-shaking intensity maps.

India, for reasons not much different from our own, is not part of GSN either. On October 10, The Indian Express quoted Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science, Technology and Ocean Development, as saying, "India surely needs to network with the global earthquake community. If this requires a rethink on old issues, the Science ministry will request for a re-look on this … issue."

Do our bombs already have Kashmiri blood on them? The magnitude 7.6 event was a natural disaster; a hundred thousand casualties were partly man-made.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist
Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

The Bomb and earthquake relief

The News, October 23, 2005
Capital Suggestion
The Bomb and earthquake relief
Dr Farrukh Saleem

According to the United States Geological Survey, "A major earthquake occurred at 8:50:40 a.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2005. The magnitude 7.6 event has been located in Pakistan."

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was caught sleeping. Our seismologists completely failed to determine the epicentre of the quake and Pakistani authorities were unaware of the real magnitude of the disaster. Our Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, on live TV, assured that the "quake had not caused any major damage." For the following five hours, up until 2 p.m., no one in Islamabad or in Rawalpindi had realised the real gravity of the calamity.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmed wasn't hiding the truth; he simply didn't know the truth. Our seismologists failed not because they are untutored but because they have been set up to fail.

The scientific fact is that "when earthquakes occur near a country's boundaries like the recent one in Kashmir, real-time data from at least three seismographs are essential in locating the earthquake's epicentre (a point on the earth's surface directly above the underground epifocal point where the earthquake originates). The determination of the epicentre in turn can lead to production of ground-shaking intensity maps, which play a crucial role in speeding aid to victims. If such maps had been generated and used during the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake, thousands of victims could have been saved."

Here is the case: There is a very strong connection between the monitoring of nuclear explosions and the monitoring of earthquakes. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine has kept the country away from any global seismic monitoring network, and without joining a global seismic monitoring network we cannot develop an effective post-earthquake-monitoring network. As a consequence, we Pakistanis continue to be extremely vulnerable to the aftermath of earthquakes; no real-time data, no determination of immediate impact, no distribution of damage reports and no effective post-earthquake relief (for the first 24 hours we were concentrating on the collapsed Margalla Towers while a hundred thousand children were buried under debris).

The Global Seismographic Network (GSN) is the most reliable seismological network on the face of the planet. As of 2003, GSN had deployed 128 permanent seismic recording stations uniformly over the earth's surface (eight new stations will be deployed by the end of 2005). GSN is a "university research consortium dedicated to exploring the Earth's interior through the collection and distribution of seismographic data." The governing Standing Committee is composed of Arizona State University, University of California, Pennsylvania State University and Yale University, among others.

Here is the catch: GSN "not only accurately monitors earthquakes at 128 stations worldwide but also assists in the verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by being the ears through which seismic signatures of nuclear detonations are detected by the participating nations."

The Pakistan Meteorological Department is not part of any global seismic monitoring network and is thus deaf, dumb and blind. For the initial crucial hours during which thousands of lives could have been saved, we didn't know the epicentre, we didn't know the distribution of damage and we didn't have any colour-coded ground-shaking intensity maps.

India, for reasons not much different from our own, is not part of GSN either. On October 10, The Indian Express quoted Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science, Technology and Ocean Development, as saying, "India surely needs to network with the global earthquake community. If this requires a rethink on old issues, the Science ministry will request for a re-look on this … issue."

Do our bombs already have Kashmiri blood on them? The magnitude 7.6 event was a natural disaster; a hundred thousand casualties were partly man-made.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist
Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Reconstruction after earthquake

Dawn, October 22, 2005
The cost of reconstruction
By Kaiser Bengali


THE October 8 earthquake will be long remembered as a cataclysmic event in Pakistan’s history for a very long time to come. The sweep of death and destruction across a vast swathe of territory from Kashmir to Hazara and Swat and Islamabad is heart-rending. The calamity has affected rich and poor, ministers and ministered, men and women, and old and young indiscriminately. More than a week after the calamity, news and images of the devastation and mangled bodies do not fail to shock. Adding to the trauma are footage of heaps of children’s bodies trapped under the debris of collapsed school buildings.

In the parts of the country that have been so affected, the standard question and discussion among the survivors is who among them is alive and who is not. In the parts of the country that have not been affected, there are many who have lost someone they knew. And not a day passes without coming across someone who has lost someone in the tragedy. The sense of personal loss is widespread.

Questions arise about the state of preparedness and the efficacy of response by the state machinery. These questions are, however, inappropriate at this point of time, with bodies still being dug out and burials taking place but they will and should be raised and answered at an appropriate moment in the next few weeks. The issue is not one of playing the blame game and resorting to witch-hunting, but of holding those occupying public offices accountable and ensuring that any future calamity anywhere in the country is handled more effectively and efficiently.

This is important in view of the undocumented lessons of the disastrous May 1999 cyclone in the Badin and Thatta districts of Sindh, where storm warnings were not conveyed to the people at large, relief work was patchy and geared more for the benefit of television cameras, rehabilitation and reconstruction work was never undertaken in earnest and the affected population was all but forgotten and abandoned.

Relief work in the earthquake affected areas is currently underway and, given the scale of the human tragedy, will have to be maintained for a length of time. Survivors will need direct, active and continuing provisions in terms of temporary housing, food and medical care for up to a year at the least. Among the survivors is a class of long-term dependents, i.e. thousands who have been widowed, orphaned and disabled and who no longer have the extended family support because of the extensity of deaths. Included in this category are the elderly, who have lost their supporting sons. And particularly vulnerable are teenage girls and young women who have lost their extended family members. This class of dependents will need to be supported, looked after and cared for over a decade or two.

Beyond the massive relief effort that will have to be undertaken over a length of time, there will also be the need to deal with the impact on the economy. In this respect, three kinds of statements have appeared from responsible elements at the highest level of officialdom. One, that there will be no impact; two, that sufficient foreign aid will begin to flow in; and three, that the reconstruction work will spur the economy on account of enhanced demand for construction related materials.

All the above presumptions are incorrect. First, statements denying any impact are downright irresponsible. Second, statements to the extent that sufficient foreign aid will flow in to mitigate the impact betray a mindset that thrives on living off the spoils that come as a result of human tragedy. The generals and their collaborators under Ziaul Haq prospered from the travails of the Afghan people for over a decade and the current dispensation under General Musharraf has benefited from the largesse that came by way of the tragedy of 9/11. The latest catastrophe in Pakistan itself now appears to have rekindled their hopes for more manna to drop from heaven.

Third, statements relating to the boost that the economy will receive from the reconstruction activity are conceptually erroneous. For an underdeveloped country, the purpose of economic development activity is to increase the size of the economy. Reconstructing a part of the economy that has suffered damage implies that scarce resources that could have been used to develop the economy further will now be devoted to rebuilding what has been destroyed. There is, as such, no efficiency gain and net growth cannot be expected to be necessarily higher as a result.

Furthermore, it is certainly likely that cement manufacturers in Punjab will profit from enhanced cement sales as a result of the losses suffered by home owners in Muzaffarabad or that FWO or NLC will profit from the NWFP government’s road rebuilding expenditures. For the economy as a whole, however, the respective profits and losses cancel each other out. Benefiting one part of the country or one sector out of the costs suffered by another part or sector is not what defines growth and development.

While some sections are likely to profit in various ways from the plight of the earthquake victims, the economic aftershocks will have to be managed. The economic impact will occur over three levels: household, regional and national. The impact on the economy of households in the affected areas has been direct and immediate. Most households have lost earning members of the family and assets that provided them with their livelihood. Landslides have obliterated or eroded agricultural land on mountain and hill slopes, and the owners of these lands have been rendered landless.

Orchards have been uprooted, requiring land to be levelled and new trees planted; however the trees will take a number of years to bear fruit. There is a low likelihood of income from tourism resuming in the immediate future until hotels and other power, transport and communications infrastructure are rebuilt. Individual shops can be constructed by private means relatively quickly, but sales are likely to be low on account of weak overall purchasing power.

The regional economy has suffered extensive damage in terms of physical infrastructure. The cities of Muzaffarabad, Rawalakot, Bagh, Balakot and other towns and villages have been razed to the ground. Roads, bridges, local hydropower units, power and telephone lines, urban water supply and sewerage facilities, etc., have been destroyed. The same holds true for public buildings housing government offices, university facilities, schools, hospitals and medical centres as well as defence installations. If the reconstruction effort is uncoordinated, it will lead to the ‘slumification’ of the entire region.

There is thus an urgent need to prepare a five-year Redevelopment Plan, with four overarching objectives: one, to attempt to erase the physical traces of the earthquake in five years; two, to rebuild the main cities and towns in a planned manner, keeping in view earthquake-resistant parameters; three, to develop the regional infrastructure for a tourist economy; and four, to ensure that the entire population is economically rehabilitated at least to the point where they were before the earthquake struck.

The national economy is not likely to be affected significantly by the earthquake in terms of loss of output; given that the area is not a major producer of either agricultural or manufactured products. Localized shortages of fruits and vegetables, and the consequential price rises of these items, are likely to occur and affect areas up to Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore. However, the fiscal and macroeconomic impact on the economy will certainly be adverse and substantially so and bear heavily on inflation. Given that international oil price rises and the ill-advised excessively liberal credit policy of the past three years have already generated an inflationary spiral, a third source of inflation will be detrimental to macroeconomic stability as well as to household economies.

The rescue and relief operation that has been undertaken so far has cost the public exchequer a significant sum. This expenditure is continuing and relief expenditures are likely to continue for several months. These expenditures will disrupt the budgetary allocations as determined in June 2005. Furthermore, the reconstruction work as outlined above will demand several hundred million rupees each year for the next five years at least. Necessary costs will also have to be borne to repair the damage to defence installations along the Line of Control.

The sum of the above expenditures will increase the budget deficit. There are four means of financing this deficit: printing money, borrowing, enhanced taxation, and reallocation of existing expenditures. Printing money, or deficit financing, will increase money supply and directly impact on the price level. Borrowing will increase interest rates and, consequently, the cost of capital, as well as raise the national debt. Enhanced indirect taxation will raise production costs and contribute to inflation. Re-allocation of development expenditure will hurt areas from where development funds are being diverted.

However, there are two non-inflationary options: one, raising direct taxation through a surcharge on non-salary incomes and the reintroduction of wealth tax and capital gains tax, and two, reducing non-development expenditures. There are several possibilities on the non-development expenditure front. The federal ministries and related divisions and departments related to the concurrent list subjects can be abolished or at least substantially downsized. There are two agencies dealing with coastal security — Coast Guards and Maritime Security Agency — one of them can be abolished.

The ministry of defence is building a new GHQ in Islamabad, the cost of which has not been made public nor the amount sanctioned by parliament. Questions of legality apart, the construction can stop and the designated funds transferred to reconstruction in the quake-affected areas. After all, the people of Pakistan and the people and governments of foreign countries cannot be asked to contribute when resources available with the government continuing to indulge in unnecessary and wasteful expenditures.

A restructuring of public finances is also important for economic as well as political reasons as well. The failure of General Yahya Khan’s regime to respond adequately to the East Pakistan cyclone in 1970 played a significant role in driving the final nail in the coffin of the erstwhile province’s relations with Islamabad. The lessons of history are stark and painful and cannot be ignored.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Can Musharraf save his citizens?

Slate.com
Getting Things Done
Pakistan's self-help society mobilizes; President Musharraf faces his own crisis.
By Mahnaz Ispahani
Friday, Oct. 14, 2005

Can Musharraf save his citizens?

Disaster relief has at least two faces, humanitarian and political. Both are already visible in Pakistan as the country attempts to recover from last Saturday's earthquake, which, recent estimates suggest, left more than 25,000 dead, 50,000 injured, and 2 million homeless in northern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The search for survivors has now been called off.

Governments invariably respond tardily to natural disasters, as the reactions to the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have amply demonstrated, and so it's no surprise that President Pervez Musharraf has faced criticism for his team's inadequate response. Addressing the nation on television on Wednesday—unusually, in Urdu and out of uniform—Musharraf tried to explain the delay: "Roads were blocked, there was no army, and the administration itself was among the victims." He blamed a lack of communications and helicopters and suggested that no government could cope readily with such a huge tragedy. Still, the lagging response has left Musharraf open to attacks, such as that mounted by an opponent who noted that the government spends millions on missiles and weapons but has no equipment to cope with a natural calamity. Opposition politicians across the political spectrum, from Musharraf's former Islamist allies Jamaat-e-Islami to the leaderless mainstream parties (former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif live perforce outside Pakistan), vacillate between forming a unified front with the government and lambasting Musharraf and his army.

Pakistan has long been unable to attend to its 162 million people's basic education, health, and human security; defense expenditures are high, but services for the poor are barely rudimentary. As a result, it has become largely a self-help society. There is no shortage of humanitarianism and charity: An August 2000 study by the Aga Khan Development Network rated Pakistan as one of the world's most charitable countries. This week, it shows. The private sector, nongovernmental organizations, political parties, and thousands of volunteers led the relief efforts. The earthquake has driven a unique mobilization of Pakistan's civil society.

Today, there are two Pakistans. One is connected by the Internet, cell phones, and television, while the other Pakistan, the earthquake zone, is a deadly quiet, largely inaccessible, communicationless world where survivors still wait to receive medical care.

The new, if still restricted, media—independent TV and FM radio channels—that Musharraf has licensed became the first information providers, showing the devastation, listing earthquake hot lines, maintaining ticker updates on the status of relief efforts, and holding telethons. Students, other private citizens, and the Pakistani diaspora are masters of the Internet: Metroblogs, a fast-growing global network of city-based blogs, are posting urgent volunteer alerts. The Joint Action Committee, a coalition of NGOs and individuals requests volunteers "able to walk long distances in mountainous terrain." Webmasters are organizing—and constantly updating—information about the supplies that are required: first and foremost, pain killers and white latha cloth for coffins, but also dry food, bandages, tents, urine bags, orthopedic implants, and much more. Visit the new site of the Joint Action Committee to see the buzz of activity. The sites, along with news reporters, are also posting cautionary stories about the chaos of early relief efforts, how untrained volunteers and clogged roads are making it more difficult for the seriously wounded to get to hospitals. This is the downside of so much autonomous, independent social action without effective government coordination. (Musharraf has now set up a federal relief commission and, according to the prime minister, 40,000 troops have moved into the affected regions.)

Chambers of commerce in the major cities, private banks, and corporations are also making handsome contributions. Banks have set up special counters for donations. Karachi, home to all Pakistan's ethnicities and a base of sectarian and al-Qaida terrorist attacks, is a sprawling maze of private and governmental relief sites where individual citizens are dropping off goods. Its medical technicians and doctors are rushing upcountry to provide relief. The city's internationally known NGOs, the Edhi Foundation and the Aga Khan Development Network, the first with long experience dealing with urban violence and the latter an expert in rural development in remotest Pakistan—put their ambulances and expertise to work immediately.

Poised to take advantage of the government's inability to cope with the disaster are the Islamist parties and their extremist cousins. The leader of the most organized party, Jamaat-e-Islami, initially proclaimed that the earthquake was "a severe reprimand from Allah Almighty," and that the nation must "shun those practices that violate Allah's injunctions and invoke His anger." In this time of national tragedy, he pointed out, "Music and dance shows are held under government patronage and the president himself dance [sic] in them to invite heavenly wrath." He called on Pakistanis to "offer repentance." Still, Jamaat's disciplined cadres, using their plentiful funds, have swung into action. They have bought medicines, food, tents, and blankets. Jamaat's Al-Khidmat Foundation has set up base camps in several ravaged towns, and its foot soldiers are walking to areas impassable by vehicles. A Jamaat representative claimed that 700 volunteers are searching for dead bodies and helping to bury them. ABC News reported on Wednesday that Jamaat-ud-Dawa—the political arm of the banned extremist militia Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, familiar for its pro-Taliban, pro-Kashmir jihad views—was among the first to set up relief camps. (Some of its militant training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir are said to have been destroyed.)

Will Musharraf and his army be able to widen their constituency as a result of this catastrophe—or will they lose what remains of it? The army is the most powerful and organized force in the country, with significant control over Pakistan's political, bureaucratic, and economic institutions, but for the first time in many years, it faces broad public criticism. If Pakistan is to deal with what will certainly be a long-term relief and rehabilitation effort, Musharraf must show his mettle as a politician who can rally both allies and opponents. Even before the disaster struck, his plate was already full with the hunt for al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden, the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, a sometimes testy peace process with India, and a controversial, "managed" transition to democracy.

Musharraf still has some supporters in a country where people yearn for both democracy and stability and are unsure if the two can coexist in these violent times, but he has alienated the mainstream political parties, many NGOs, and ordinary citizens. His prospects and Pakistan's future as the peaceful, moderate Muslim state he says he seeks may rest on the distance he is willing to travel to unite the country and win the confidence of a cluster of largely moderate constituencies. Dramatic, highly visible failures—in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 and in the civil war of 1971—led to the ouster of two previous Pakistani presidents-general. Will it be an earthquake that unseats Musharraf?

Mahnaz Ispahani is an adjunct senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served for a decade at the Ford Foundation.

Points to ponder!

Daily Times, October 22, 2005
SECOND OPINION: Why are the Jews ‘kanjoos’? —Khaled Ahmed’s Review of the Urdu press

Pakistani Jews could be killed the same way a number of Qadianis were killed this month after the Urdu press published offensive Khatm-e-Nabuwwat material against them. The religious leaders who spewed the poison were not named in the FIR

We have a stereotype of the Jew. He is supposed to be mean and miserly. In the past, many nations had the same stereotype till they became civilised. Shakespeare gave English a new idiom about miserliness in a play discussing a cruel Jew. We have another stereotype about the Hindus, which is remarkably similar. Both Hindus and Jews were the underclass that plied commerce when being a warrior carried the badge of honour. Today both Jews and Hindus are on the rise. The warriors are down and out.

According to Prof Adil Najam writing in daily Pakistan (September 21, 2005) a Jewish synagogue in Karachi was destroyed in 1960 to make way for a plaza. There was also a Jewish graveyard looked after by a Jewish lady. This graveyard, too, was destroyed to make room for a plaza. The Jewish lady was promised an apartment in the plaza after its completion but she never got it and vainly tried to approach the government to help her. The Jews left Pakistan in great misery after 1947.

The story is painful. Another report says that there are actually 250 Jews in Karachi but they have changed their names to hide their identity. The truth is that it is dangerous to talk about the Jews today. Someone might even kill these poor remnants because of the poison the Urdu press secretes about them. This month the Urdu press published offensive Khatm-e-Nabuwwat material against the Qadianis. Two days later seven Qadianis were shot dead in Mandi Bahauddin near Lahore. The religious leaders who spewed the poison have not been named in the FIR.

Writing in Jang (September 19, 2005) Mehmood Sham stated that as he prepared to sit at the table arranged by the World Jewish Council for Pakistani journalists he noticed that there were only sandwiches, tea and cold drinks for the Pakistani journalists. He remembered that Jews were famous for kanjoosi (miserliness). Behind the mikes on the stage the backdrop was of black cloth, just like the black past of Pakistan-Israel relations and possibly future also.

More than the tight fist of the Jews, the occasion highlighted how visceral the Muslim guest was. Once upon a time, Muslims had a reputation for austerity; today they are civilisationally impoverished but ostentatious in adversity. They are still warriors prizing honour while the world belongs to the formerly downtrodden who had to do commerce to survive. The warriors continue to be simple-minded; the ‘kanjoos’ nations have a sophisticated mind.

Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt (August 31, 2005) Prof Fateh Muhammad Malik wrote that it was Allama Iqbal not Chaudhry Rehmat Ali who wrote the famous pamphlet Now or Never in 1932 in which the name Pakistan was proposed for the new Muslim state. Chaudhry Rehmat Ali was one of the students Iqbal knew in London. Once Rehmat Ali went to see him and asked what name he would give to the Muslim state he had thought of. Allama Iqbal replied that he would call it Pakistan.

The writer of this review had two pieces of evidence about the name Pakistan. My elderly relative late Dr Jahangir Khan told me that the name ‘Pakistan’ was coined by Khwaja Abdur Rahim. Then on his visit to Pakistan from India Azim Hussain, the son of Punjab’s legendary Unionist leader Fazle Husain, told me that his cousin and Pakistan’s late foreign secretary, Arshad Hussain, had actually seen Khwaja Abdur Rahim derive the name from a Central Asian map!

According to Khabrain (September 17, 2005) Indian Muslim-born tennis star Sania Mirza was warned by the clerics of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind that she would have to wear a shalwar in place of her shorts to play tennis in future or they would take action against her. Following this the Indian government increased Ms Mirza’s security. She said she was determined to play in Calcutta but she did not comment on the threat from the clergy to stop her from playing if she did not play in a shalwar.

India’s democracy allows the Muslim clerics to become more and more extremist, but it will prevent them from doing harm to the Muslim tennis star.

According to Khabrain (September 18, 2005) Islamic scholar Dr Riffat Hassan read a paper at a gathering in New York which said ‘blasphemous’ things about the Quran when she pointed out that the Holy Quran did not mention the name of Hawwa, nor did it say that Hawwa was created out of Adam’s rib. Pakistani journalists led by ARY’s Dr Shahid Masood objected to her deviating from the Quran and said that her version was against the Islamic tradition. Dr Hassan also said that Adam was a Hebrew word meaning earth and the Holy Quran meant both men and women when it referred to Adam. Also the Quran stated that men and women were created from the same essence. Her point was that the Quran believed in the equality of men and women. The journalists said that the matter could only be decided in the light of fiqh. Khabrain also published the views of the ulema who said that hadith did refer to Hawwa and Adam as separate people.

The truth is that the Holy Quran doesn’t mention either Hawwa’s name or her creation from Adam’s rib. If you disagree with this, why lose your cool over it?

Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt (September 19, 2005) Ataur Rehman stated that Musharraf had embraced the liberal and enlightened intellectuals and NGOs when he came to power. These liberal enlightened intellectuals were once supporters of the Soviet Union but now they had become slaves of the United States because of the money they received from it. After Musharraf gave them shelter these NGOs threw caution to the wind and revealed their total slavery of the US. Now Musharraf is angry with the NGOs and their enlightened ladies, while Pakistan’s secular intellectuals look like the lost sheep of Israel who didn’t know their direction.

There is nothing one can do when lies are repeated as mantras. The real problem is that the right wing doesn’t want to include the leftwing NGOs in its trade union of hatred against America. Anti-Americanism is not the monopoly of the right wing alone. Pakistan was introduced to it by the Left, which now runs the NGOs with anti-American European funds and remains anti-American. *

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Eye-Witness account of "relief operations"

South Asia Tribune, October 15, 2005
Famous TV Journalist says Killer Quake Wiped Out the Kashmir Dream
Special SAT Report

ISLAMABAD, October 16: Not only the entire civil administration and the political leadership of Azad Kashmir had evaporated, the military struggle for liberation of Kashmir has also been buried under the killer earthquake of October 8, a senior TV journalist said after an extensive tour of the affected areas

Dr Shahid Masood, TV personality of Dubai-based ARY One World Network told the South Asia Tribune there was widespread looting and chaos in most of the areas where no relief has arrived and where even the damage to life and property has not been assessed.

Dr Masood returned to Islamabad on Friday after a five-day tour during which he walked more than 50 kilometers on foot, reaching Muzaffarabad, Balakot and Chakothi and saw the devastation, recording it on his camera before any relief parties could reach there.

Dr Masood’s in-depth coverage of the destruction from Muzaffarabad was one of the prime factors which brought a sleeping Islamabad and its ruling classes into action as he was the first TV person to point out that the October 8 quake was not just about a fallen apartment building in Islamabad but about death and misery to thousands more wiped out in remote areas.

Dr. Masood was particularly critical of those Government spokesmen, including the Minister of Information Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who had attacked the first reports of ARY and denied that any vast devastation had taken place. "They started attacking me by name while denying everything. Look where they stand now, shameless."

The ARY channel interviewed several victims of the quake in Muzaffarabad and other badly hit areas while pointed questions thrown by Dr Masood at ill informed and shameless Government ministers and spokesmen brought home the fact that Islamabad was caught napping and mourning the Margalla Complex when an entire humanity has been wiped out in Hazara and Kashmir.

In his interview to the South Asia Tribune Dr Masood said the pathetic fact was that the political leadership and the ruling elite of Kashmir had disappeared from the scene and most of the Azad Kashmir cabinet ministers were enjoying normal life in government rest houses and AJK House in Islamabad.

Neither there was any civilian administration nor the Army had declared some kind of a military rule for the emergency with the result that a free for all had ensued with every one trying desperately to survive. “It was the day after a nuclear bomb blast, or even worse.”

“I could not see even one Kashmiri militant on the spot providing even verbal consolation to the hopeless and devastated victims. From Mujahid-e-Awal (the title given to Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan) to all the Mujahideen belonging to the socalled Liberation Struggle, no one was in sight,” he said.

The failure of the political leadership, Dr. Masood said, was stark but the performance of the Pakistan Armed Forces was only slightly better as they were on the spot but they had no clue how to coordinate a relief effort required to be colossal in scale and monumental in size.

“I could see that the Chief Secretary of Azad Kashmir, wearing a suit and tie even in such terrible conditions, was running helter skelter to get a handle on the situation, but in vain. All his officers, his police and his infra-structure had been buried under the rubble,” Dr. Masood said.

Dr Masood said the tragedy of Kashmir will continue to unfold for days and weeks as all of those thousands who have lost their family and friends would try to find the remains and bodies of their loved ones and failing that would turn their anger on someone, most probably the Government of the day.

After the extensive tour of the badly hit areas, the senior journalist said the Government will have to do a much better job to rehabilitate the affected people if a political fallout was to be avoided.

Dr Masood will be presenting a series of programs on his extensive visit to Kashmir in the coming days.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Management of a Disaster

Dawn, October 16, 2005
Management of a disaster
By Kunwar Idris

THE Pakistan army has come to occupy the centre-stage in the country’s politics and administration. The politicians and the civil servants may accept or resent this situation, as they varyingly do, but are compelled to take a role subordinate to the soldiers, or quit if they don’t.

That is in times normal. In the havoc wrought by the earthquake they are hardly seen playing any role at all. The distressed people must be wondering who would have done, whatever little is being done for them, if the soldiers were not there. The people cannot be faulted for carrying this impression. A sad but hard fact to be recognized is that army is the only effective and disciplined institution left in the country today. All others stand diminished or subverted.

This is recognition of a fact — and not a tribute, but an indictment. The army’s repeated interventions in civil affairs on the pretext of rooting out corruption or restoring law arid order and then staying on and on to reform the system (the reform as the commanders view it) have not only shattered the political parties, the civil services and indeed civil society itself but has also made them all irresponsible. No other event or argument can underline this position more forcefully than the harrowing tragedy of the earthquake.

In managing the current crisis, the civil administrator; at all levels and of all vocations have been silent spectators and the ministers and other politicians only haranguing. The district administration, which used to be the pivotal point of action and source of relief in all calamities — natural or man-made — has all but ceased to exist. This action and responsibility both now stand transferred not even to provincial capitals but to Islamabad.

The involvement of the federal government and of the army in an operation of this vast and tragic proportions was indeed necessary and inevitable but the rescue and relief would have been managed quicker and better were it to be assessed and supervised by the district administration. The criticism for delay and neglect then, too, would have been directed at the local officials and not at the president and the army commanders.

The councillors and nazims have a role to play in community and civic affairs but they cannot be a substitute for professional administrators at all times and more particularly in an emergency. In the system introduced by General Musaharraf, the nucleus of administration its a district where all departments were represented has disintegrated.

The real worth of the deputy commissioner or district magistrate lay not in his powers or even competence but in providing a forum for the representatives of all departments — federal, provincial or autonomous — to assemble and coordinate their activities whenever the circumstances so demanded.

Now all of them have to wait for instructions or orders from their superiors in the provincial or federal capitals before they act. Such a phenomenon was observed by Nick Bryant of BBC at a destruction site where the men of an organization were present but waited for instructions from above before extending a helping hand to the people buried in the rubble.

The decentralization of authority is an obvious necessity but more important in an emergency is that the officials on the spot should lie able to act even beyond the delegated authority. This view of administration was articulated well by Sir Bartle Frere in a communication to John Lawrence.

He wrote: “There is always in India (read Pakistan) some need for public servants acting without order on the assurance that when their superiors hear their reasons, their acts will be approved and confirmed; and 1 hold that when you have extinguished that feeling of mutual confidence between superior and subordinate authorities and made public men timid you will have removed one great safeguard of our Indian empire. It does not take long to bridle a body of public servants as to paralyse their power of acting without order”.

In Pakistan it hasn’t taken long at all. What Frere said 150 years ago is as relevant to the republic of Pakistan as it was to the Indian empire. The great pity is that now the public servants fail, or refuse, to do even what lies in their power without orders from their superiors (read ministers). No doubt then that the local administration was paralysed when the people were dying and the looters were revelling.

All authority at the centre and a paralysed administration in the field has cost lives which could have been saved in the rescue and relief phase of the disaster. A source of further worry, however, is that in implementing the measures the president outlined in his broadcast of last Wednesday (timely and well thought out though it was) the same mistake may be repeated on a larger scale in the reconstruction and rehabilitation phase.

The impression one got was that all the controls will continue to lie in Islamabad and the authority in the army commanders. Every stricken area has its own needs and priorities. The authority, therefore, should vest in the district or in a field unit specially defined in relation to the disaster. Islamabad should provide the money, the army may help but the implementation should be made a responsibility of the local administration. That might bring life back to normal in a year and not three or four as the president imagines or his central advisers propose.

Two more quick thoughts in a situation of grief and helplessness. First, if our 10,000 or more madressahs could raise legions large and inspired enough to conquer Afghanistan, surely they could have provided fewer volunteers to help their own suffering people. That is the spirit of the doctrine of jihad. The jihad they launched has ended up in terror. Second, we should recognize our friends by the help they render and not the faith they profess.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

A World Turned Upside Down: WSJ

Wall Street Journal
A World Turned Upside Down
By RUSSELL SEITZ
October 12, 2005; Page A16

When Kipling was a cub reporter in Lahore, the area struck by Saturday's earthquake was a blank on the map separating British India from the "Independent Khanates of Chinese Turkistan." Washington scarcely cared if the Victorian Empire needed a weapon of mass destruction called the Maxim gun to deter hotheads along the Northwest Frontier, for it was a long way from anywhere. Now America's concerns are more ecumenical and acute: Pakistan's 1998 bomb test conjoined the world's three great monotheistic religions in a nuclear trinity (to say nothing of the polytheistic Hindus nearby, with their own nuclear saga).

There's no predicting the outcome when a natural disaster strikes an inexperienced nuclear state bordering two others. The aftershocks may loosen Pakistan's postcolonial grip on its wild and woolly Northern Areas, or shake its fragile truce with India in long-partitioned Kashmir. The quake rattled Pakistan's armories, nuclear and conventional, shattered its military academy, and left some of its general staff sleeping in the streets alongside a million other traumatized citizens.

It also severed the Karakoram highway, the amazing but fragile artery linking Pakistan to its conflicted frontiers and providing western China's only direct connection to world trade. The new North-South strategic highway runs through a landscape as unstable as the region's politics, for the Indian subcontinent has been thrusting into the heart of Asia since the days of the dinosaurs, raising some of the highest mountains like the bow wave of a dreadnaught and garlanding them with metamorphic treasures like the sapphires of Kashmir and the rubies and lapis lazuli of Hunza and Badakhshan.

This tectonic beauty comes at a high human cost. Last December, the far edge of the Indian Plate popped open a 1,000-kilometer split in the Andaman seabed, raising the tsunami in which 300,000 perished. Now the same great plate's 60-mile-deep keel has surged forward, nudging peaks like K-2 and Nanga Parbat a little higher, and knocking the ground out from under everyone from Kabul to Kashmir.

North of Srinagar, in India's Vale of Kashmir, villagers blocked highways demanding aid for stricken mountain hamlets. Scientists and climbers are missing, too, for the stunning exposure of living rock on 25,000-foot peaks and the flanks of the Indus gorge make the region a geological and mountaineering Mecca.

The exaggerated verticality of northern Pakistan makes it scientifically transparent but politically opaque, with borders hard to define and harder to guard. The chaos in the quake's aftermath has put the field in motion for fugitives of all stripes. Al Qaeda cadres and Islamist Kashmiri separatists can readily lose themselves among the flux of refugees in a region famed for discreet hospitality. It cannot have escaped Osama Bin Laden's attention that in the 19th century the Aga Khan spent tranquil years in Hunza while internecine war made him a hunted man elsewhere in the Islamic world. Today, the Raj has evaporated in India, but in Pakistan's Northern Areas some local notables' business cards still read "Head of State." Political parties -- some religious, some ethnic -- have proliferated in the Punjab and the parts of southern Pakistan that share an Urdu culturre with India; but in the North, men owe their first allegiance to where they were born, not to where politicians in
Islamabad want borders to be.

The region's isolation in the months to come could erode Pakistan's often-resented efforts to integrate the linguistically and ethnically distinct populations of areas like Baltistan, a "Little Tibet" where mountains five miles high enforce local autonomy -- and where the central government's authority fades out of sight of the now-obliterated roads built to enforce it. The tembllor's timing is itself disastrous, for the north helps feed Pakistan, and harvests have been isolated from the urban markets by the wholesale destruction of infrastructure. Far away, in Karachi and Quetta, the political impact is being felt, as food prices soar despite the imposition of price controls. A month ago, polo was being played at 11,000 feet in the summer pastures of the north. Now the monsoon has combined with the quake to set slow-motion boulder-falls down the Indus Valley, with a hard freeze to follow. Only come spring will Pakistan know the true toll in areas too high for helicopters.

The Indo-European frontier was already an ethnic and religious crossroads when Alexander the Great passed through. It has seen the rise and fall of whatever gods were worshipped in the era of the proto-Hindu Mohenjo-Daro civilization, and then of Gandharan Greco-Buddhism; but only in the last few decades has the upper Indus begun to see much of the outside world. Even in four-mile-deep valleys isolated as Kipling's not-quite-fictional "Kaffiristan," Internet cafƩs are up and running; and this winter, un-wired teahouse firesides may be enlivened by well-armed Afghans driven across the borders of Kunar and Badakhshan by U.S. or U.S.-backed forces. Still, equating Islam on the Upper Indus with the Taliban is as inane and dangerous as representing the Ku Klux Klan as typical of American Christianity; for while hidebound Salafist mullahs may prevail in one mosque, a valley away female education may be compulsory and Ismaili merchants may come and go from around the world.

Mountains like the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush will go on rising whether borders or empires stand or fall, and the erosive force of the Indus River will sweep away whatever the angry earth throws down as the tectonic plates continue their collision. Saturday's quake was as powerful as the one that leveled San Francisco, but one of these centuries the rafting together of the Asian and Indus plates will rock the subcontinent with quakes a hundred times stronger, as it has before. It may take a harder shock than Saturday's to persuade the subcontinent's capitals to recognize that, partition notwithstanding, they are in the same tectonic boat. The region's conflicts may seem intractable, but the Earth is ever patient in its diplomacy. The civilizations of South Asia have a half-billion years' grace in which to resolve their age-old differences before the slow tectonic violence that has put fossil seashells atop Everest crumples Ceylon -- unserendipitously -- into the mountainous seashore of Tibet.

Mr. Seitz is a physicist in Cambridge, Mass.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Help Pakistan in the wake of Earthquake

To help victims of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan on October 8, please contribute generously. For donations please click
http://www.developpakistan.org

Eathquake Tragedy and Response

Daily Times, October 11, 2005
EDITORIAL: In the aftermath of tragedy, honour and fortitude

As we feared in yesterday’s editorial (“Getting the right perspective on the earthquake”), the death toll in the earthquake that hit Pakistan’s north on Sunday has risen to 40,000. But information from many remote areas is still sketchy. This means that it will take weeks for the last count to come in and the final figure of fatalities could go even higher. This makes the disaster the worst tragedy in Pakistan’s 58-year history. Indeed, in terms of the devastation it has wrought, it exceeds other recent quake disasters in the region. Therefore the government’s announcement of a three-day mourning period has simply expressed what all of us are feeling at this point.

But the tragedy has also brought out the best in the nation. Across the country people have risen to the challenge and started contributing to relief efforts. Long queues could be seen outside the Edhi Centres at various places and this newspaper’s reports indicate that many citizens eager to contribute or do something were calling up to find out how best they could help and be part of a national effort to mitigate the sufferings of the victims of this disaster.

There is a lesson in this. For too long we have mourned the apathy of this nation; much has been written about how we lack the ability for collective action; how we are incapable of organised endeavour. But this tragedy and the response to it by the people prove that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with us. We can rise to any challenge when we perceive a need and when our captains are able to provide good leadership.

No one event can inform the analyst about a nation just as no individual can be gauged by a single incident. But it is important to see how adversity affects an individual or a community and what the responses to it are when the chips are down. If the individual or the group acts with honour, courage and fortitude, then there is every reason to believe that he or they are capable of positive action if they are provided the correct incentive and the circumstances are propitious.

The quake has shown a sub-text about how we have been governed — bad regulations, corruption, uncaring attitudes. But more importantly, it has shown how we can disown differences and act together in a joint national cause. If we can rise from the rubble of this quake, surely we can also rise from the ashes of our conflictual politics and poor governance.

Meanwhile, we would be remiss not to mention the wonderful response of the international community to our call for help. Countries across the globe have contributed to the relief effort, and many foreigners have already arrived to participate physically in rescue efforts. Foreign governments are also sending much-needed equipment and other necessities to help the survivors of the tragedy. The manner in which the world has joined hands to help Pakistan shows that humanity transcends ethnic, linguistic and religious boundaries and particularities. This should be another lesson for those who cherish millenarian tendencies and are bent upon shedding blood on the basis of religion and other such markers. This lesson too must be heeded and not forgotten.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Karzai in Crisis

Daily Times, October 10, 2005
COMMENT: It takes two hands to clap —Ahmed Rashid

Karzai faced bigger problems in 2001, but had always sided with the public’s desire for change, reform, and an end to past abuses. Now, after four years and little change in their lives, people are becoming frustrated. Karzai seems to be acting against the people’s wishes by retaining warlords, refusing to allow parties, or carrying out accountability

On October 3, a crowd of a least 5,000 Afghans gathered in Kabul to protest the murder of a prominent parliamentary candidate and demanded the resignation of powerful warlord General Atta Mohammed, a provincial governor. Just a few days earlier, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, one of President Hamid Karzai’s closest aides — highly respected for his honesty and desire for radical reforms — resigned, in what his friends say is a mood of “anger and frustration”.

Karzai faces challenges both from the Afghan people and from elites within his own government. Clearly, though Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections have concluded, the hard part is yet to come. At least 1,200 people have been killed this year in Taliban-related violence, and the presidential and parliamentary elections cost the international community nearly $300 million.

Both the international community and the Karzai administration now face the challenges of building stable, functioning state machinery and infrastructure, while fighting off a Taliban insurgency, warlordism, drug trafficking, and corruption.

Little of this has been accomplished in the four years following the defeat of the Taliban. And now the two components essential to success — the Western alliance (the US-led coalition, NATO, and international aid donors) and the Karzai government — appear to be faltering even as a resurgent Taliban escalate their offensive.

Two days after the September 18 elections for a new parliament and 34 provincial councils, Karzai proudly told reporters that Afghanistan, “now has a constitution, a president, a parliament, and a nation fully participating in its destiny”. However, he has failed to ensure that the political architecture, constructed at enormous loss of life and expense, matches reforms on the ground.

The low voter turnout showed growing public disillusionment with the government and the slow pace of reforms. Compared to the 70 percent of votes cast in the presidential elections a year ago, only 53 percent turned out for the parliamentary elections. In Kabul, the most politicised city in the country, the turnout was only 36 percent.

Meanwhile, the Taliban insurgency demonstrated its staying power by an unusual and devastating urban attack, when on September 28, a suicide bomber killed nine Afghan soldiers and wounded 36 outside a military training centre in Kabul. Afghans, including Karzai, believe that the Taliban leadership continues to operate from Pakistan. The current situation differs drastically from the hopes and visions for Afghanistan a year ago. After the presidential elections, Karzai promised to use the coming 12 months to carry out a vigorous reform agenda that would change Afghanistan. Instead, through his actions — and more importantly, inaction — he has wasted the past year.

Despite the support of the US embassy and the United Nations, Karzai abandoned the reform agenda in favour of maintaining the status quo and his own power. Afghanistan has never had a strong central government, and only now has Karzai managed to extend the government’s writ to provinces. Still, an enormous amount of crucial legislation (to encourage local and foreign investment, set up state institutions, establish a modern judiciary, and so on) has not been carried out.

Encouraged by their leader’s pledge to enforce accountability for the massive human rights violations committed by warlords over the past 25 years, Afghans expected that he would continue a vigorous campaign against them. Instead, warlords have only been reshuffled among top cabinet and provincial jobs. Not a single drug baron — many of whom are well-known warlords, cabinet ministers, and commanders — has been ousted or convicted.

The initial election results indicate that the warlords and their supporters will dominate the future parliament. They will block every reform proposed by Karzai and demand he retire progressives in the cabinet and install their own nominees. Instead of spurring on development goals and reconstruction, the parliament will likely become a major hindrance for both.

Further, Karzai’s refusal to allow a party political system to flourish before the elections — a hallmark of any serious democracy — will also allow individual warlords to exert unnecessary influence. An indecisive man at the best of times, Karzai is unlikely to either control or confront the new parliament. Karzai believes that political parties were responsible for destroying Afghanistan in the past and that he can control parliament through one-on-one meetings with representatives.

While things look bleak within Afghanistan, Western countries are showing signs of backing off just when they are needed the most. “The need for the international community to have a commitment here and patience is absolutely essential”, said Lt Gen Karl Eikenberry, the head of US forces in Afghanistan.

However, American commitment may be diminishing. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld indicated his desire to see up to a quarter of the 18,000-strong US forces out of Afghanistan by next spring, to be replaced by NATO troops. Battered by the insurgency in Iraq, the hurricane in Louisiana, and historically low poll ratings, President George W Bush is desperate to show the American people a success story in the war against terrorism and also bring some troops home from somewhere.

Plans call for the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban and the separate NATO-led peacekeeping force to merge in the spring of 2006. But major NATO countries, including France, Spain, and Germany, are resisting the merger or refusing to take part in counter-insurgency fighting. Other European members are refusing to commit more troops to Afghanistan — even in a peacekeeping mode.

The international donor community is faltering in its commitment to provide sufficient aid for reconstructing the country so that a self-sustaining economy can emerge. Western donors have committed on average about $2.5 billion every year for the past four years for reconstruction, but less than half that money has been actually disbursed. Four years on, not a single new dam, power station, or major water system has been built. Afghanistan remains the third poorest country in the world.

Though Western donors are also financing the training of an Afghan army, police, justice system, and bureaucracy, the process is too slow and funds inadequate. Jean Arnault, the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan says the Afghan people “were exasperated” over the disability of the bureaucracy and the judiciary.

Karzai faced bigger problems in 2001, but had always sided with the public’s desire for change, reform, and an end to past abuses. Now, after four years and little change in their lives, people are becoming frustrated. Karzai seems to be acting against the people’s wishes by retaining warlords, refusing to allow parties, or carrying out accountability. However, he still has time to rediscover his vision for the nation.

Afghanistan’s political system will not succeed without steady and substantial assistance from the international community over the long term. Ultimately, only a renewed Western commitment — not a withdrawal — will give the Afghans the confidence to tackle their monumental problems. It will continue to take two hands to clap to rebuild Afghanistan.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of ‘Taliban’ and ‘Jihad’ and is a correspondent for The Daily Telegraph for Pakistan, Central Asia and Afghanistan. This article appeared in YaleGlobal Online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu), a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

In the midst of a triangle

Dawn, October 9, 2005
In the midst of a triangle
By Dr Zhang Li

This book is a collection of 16 papers read by government policy-makers, politicians and scholars from various countries including Pakistan at a seminar held by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute in collaboration with the Hanns Seidel Foundation on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute earlier this year

Dr Zhang Li writes about China’s policy in South Asia and how it can play a pivotal role in the resolution of the Kashmir issue

The Kashmir dispute has haunted Pakistan and India for more than five decades. China has long been relevant to Kashmir geographically, historically and strategically. Beijing has serious concerns about this area especially the lndo-Pakistan confrontation centred on it during the last few years as a result of the known geo-political developments. Generally speaking, China’s view on Kashmir has much to do with its evolving relations with India and Pakistan, two major South Asian powers.

As is widely known, China and India enjoyed a short-lived honeymoon during the 1950’s. At the same time, Beijing had unstable relations with Islamabad even after the Bandung Conference, primarily due to Pakistan’s strategic ties with Seato and Cento, US-sponsored alliances aimed at containing the Soviet Union and China. In those days China’s basic position on Kashmir was a “no involvement” and “doing justice” approach, advocating the necessity of bilaterally addressing the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir without any extra-regional interference. This ostensibly impartial approach was more conformable with India’s position in the existing context, in view of the then regional reality of Indian supremacy over Pakistan. But, the “no involvement” approach was significantly underscored by the fact that, even at the warmest period of Sino-Indian relations during the 1950’s, Zhou Enlai politely and firmly declined Jawaharlal Nehru’s invitation to visit Srinagar and refused to comment on the issue in India’s favour.

The 1962 Sino-Indian border war directly caused by the border dispute decisively changed Beijing’s perception and calculus of its strategic interest in the South Asian subcontinent. This helped reshape its policy options towards the region in general and towards Kashmir in particular. To be specific, the rising animosity and mounting rivalry between China and India made Beijing visibly alter its attitude to the India-Pakistan tussle over Kashmir. Roughly during the same period, Islamabad’s positive engagements with Beijing, especially signing a major border agreement with China in 1963, proved to be considerably useful in enhancing China’s sympathy for Pakistan on Kashmir. It is worth mentioning, however, that China’s prudence in dealing with this issue was marked by its insistence that the Sino-Pakistan border agreement would by nature be provisional. Hence it was subject to adjustment and finalization after a final settlement of the Kashmir issue had been arrived at between India and Pakistan.

In adjusting its relations with India and Pakistan in the early 1960’s, China’s basic position on Kashmir has seen some meaningful changes. It began to emphasize that the prospect of the disputed region should be envisaged and decided through a UN supervised plebiscite based on genuine representation and self-determination of the people of Kashmir. This approach actually meant that Beijing began to morally support the campaign of freedom and secession from India within Kashmir and endorse Islamabad’s claim to Kashmir as a whole. During the Indo-Pakistan war in 1965, Beijing clearly expressed its full solidarity with Pakistan and strongly supported Pakistan’s position of getting back Kashmir. As a tangible testimony of helping Pakistan, Beijing voiced an ultimatum to New Delhi, warning to undertake measures that were deemed to be proper unless India stopped its military provocations along the unsettled Sino-Indian boundary. Beijing’s statement sent a clear signal that it was supporting Pakistan, and it proved to be quite useful for Islamabad in reinforcing its ability to confront India. New Delhi, sensing the purposeful pressure from Beijing, had to deploy a large amount of troops along its lengthy border with China in case of a second front supposedly initiated by China...

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How far the peace process in South Asia will proceed could be primarily decided by what kind of concessions the two sides are ready to make in a series of uneasy bargains
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Sino-Indian relations witnessed a visible thaw since the late 1980’s and China began to revise its South Asia policy around the mid-1990’s, symbolized by the high-profile exchange of visits and the kick-starting of a series of confidence-building thrusts. Referring to the Kashmir issue, Beijing began to tentatively play down the significance of several UN resolutions on Kashmir that basically endorse a final settlement by a virtually pro-Pakistan plebiscite, and came around to support a formula of resolving the Kashmir problem through bilateral negotiations based on the 1972 Shimla Accord rather than foreign interventions. While comprehending Islamabad’s vital stake in the ultimate outcome of the Kashmir stalemate, Beijing has repeatedly proposed that India and Pakistan should work together on other easier, but still significant, aspects of their bilateral relationship prior to reaching a final resolution on Kashmir.


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New observations

The recent heightened tone of Indo-Pakistan interaction has raised general expectations for peace in South Asia. But a key point tends to be overlooked. To make the process practically fruitful, both New Delhi and Islamabad have to adopt a give-and-take approach, regardless of whether they are willing or not. But the fact is that they have both stressed the major differences in their respective outlooks on the root and nature of their problematic relationship, setting different preconditions for the normalcy of bilateral relations: New Delhi has claimed that the cross-border terrorism must be completely stopped before normalization and essential improvement of the bilateral relations takes place. By contrast, Pakistan emphasizes the issue of Kashmir and considers it the “core issue” determining all dimensions of the two countries’ relationship. This huge gap is quite understandable in terms of their respective reasoning and arguments which they have articulated for their own national interests. But for detached foreign observers, the setting of respective requisites for the prospects of bilateral ties, would narrow the range of options for India and Pakistan. It would envisage a formidable and even an almost unachievable mission in seeking a substantial breakthrough in the stalemate because of lack of flexibility and realistic thinking.

From a Chinese perspective, given prevailing circumstances, how far the peace process in South Asia will proceed could be primarily decided by what kind of concessions the two sides are ready to make in a series of uneasy bargains. One could make some predictions in terms of the nature of the amity as well as the possible bottom lines set by the two. It has been argued whether New Delhi could underplay its original starting point for facilitating official negotiations between the two capitals and for normalizing relations with Pakistan. Instead of demanding a complete end to cross-border terrorism, it could highlight the emerging fact that military and terrorist infiltrations across the LoC have been considerably reduced and the situation within the Kashmir Valley has become visibly improved.

As an important development, the Musharraf government has intensified operations against terrorist outfits and groups within Pakistan, many of which are believed to have been associated with trans-border penetrations. This enhancing effort and its outcome in this regard have received high acclaim worldwide. Currently, many signs still indicate that the Musharraf regime’s hard-handed crackdowns on extremism will continue. However, New Delhi has grudged offering encouraging assessments and timely acknowledgements of Pakistan’s initiative; and India’s popular reactions to it have basically been sceptical and fastidious. It has been argued that if India adequately recognizes the endeavour Musharraf made in targeting militant fundamentalists and, therefore, lowers its request for total end of cross-border militancy, it would surely be helpful in facilitating the process of dialogue and amity between the two sides.

Another dimension pertaining to the current Kashmir problem is how to envisage Washington’s role as a virtual mediator in South Asia. As a matter of fact, both New Delhi and Islamabad become increasingly aware of tangible US involvement in their bilateral affairs and, interestingly, have always taken account of the tremendous American influence over recent years. It is well known that New Delhi and Islamabad hold totally different views of foreign meddling. In contrast to Islamabad’s interest in invoking active international involvement and even accept it as an indispensable catalyst for a reasonable resolution of the Kashmir issue, New Delhi has impressively rejected any strategy of involving external powers or international bodies, let alone relying on them...

According to a prevailing Chinese view, any imposed extra-regional power’s influence in the present South Asian equation does and will produce mixed effects on the prospect of India-Pakistan rapprochement. Despite some obvious merits, Washington’s zeal, if moving beyond the limits, might bring about new uncertainties. And external pressure on the two countries to take action cannot guarantee the endurance of commitment to amity if there is not enough inherent dynamism for envisaging major issues from inside.

Indeed, many analysts outside South Asia have speculated that the active engagements between India and Pakistan since 2003 might be primarily regarded as a result of external influence, particularly the increasing pressure from Washington. True, America’s low-key statements are in contrast to the impressive exchange of conciliatory rhetoric and postures between New Delhi and Islamabad. Several controversial Pentagon documents, released by an Indian website, illustrate that Washington has a strongly proposed “road map” of the South Asian peace process, which highlights a pressing American involvement in the regional scenario. It even offers a timetable for making the regional leaders meet the requirements, which are predominantly to end India-Pakistan confrontation and to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

If the authenticity of these documents is confirmed, it will be seen as a convincing case of high-handed outside pressures that drive both India and Pakistan to seek peace and stability in the region. So a significant concern here is whether both countries equally sense the imperativeness and urgency of reconciliation and, perhaps more important, whether they are politically and psychologically ready to reach a consensus on the basis of reciprocal concessions and accommodation. If it is not the case, one could barely be optimistic about the prospect of the South Asian reconciliation process...

Current developments indicate that both Indian and Pakistani policy-makers have expressed their inclination to lower the threshold of normalizing the relations. This brings about the probability of reasonably underplaying the preconditions set by the two and actually sends out an active signal on a reciprocal basis. It is noted that the joint statement issued by the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in New York in October 2005 makes no reference to the “cross-border terrorism” in view of the fact that the trans-LoC militant penetrations from Pakistan have become obviously reduced. According to the Indian leader, this key document committed the two countries “to advance beyond what was agreed to in the January 6 (2004) statement both in terms of discussing confidence-building measures as well as moving to discuss complex issues relating to the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.

To give another example, as Musharraf currently proposes, Pakistan is willing to go beyond the UN resolutions and no longer impose its demand for plebiscite in Kashmir. According to this proposal, the two countries would first designate some areas on the flanks of the LoC, demilitarize them and then change their status in order to phase out the remaining issues. Meanwhile, he asked India to show flexibility by abandoning the claim of a simple conversion of the LoC into a permanent boundary. This interaction of willingness should be valued greatly against the backdrop of the domestic opposition to and criticism of the peace initiatives.

Active role

Based on China’s parallel cultivation of its relations with both Islamabad and New Delhi; in view of the emerging Indo-Pakistan rapprochement; and the still suspended setting for the Kashmir problem, some interesting and meaningful questions have already been raised: Does Beijing’s balanced stance mean a basic change from practicing “no involvement” to reasonably coming on the scene? Would Beijing find the chance of playing a constructive role in the current India-Pakistan interaction? What kind of role and what type of behaviour will China be expected to conduct? Would China be mutually accepted by India and Pakistan as a responsible facilitator in that region? And more important, how does Beijing design its significant role aimed to pursue both South Asian rapprochement and its own national interests? These questions need serious probes and answers.


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Excerpted with permission from:
The Kashmir Imbroglio: Looking Towards the Future
Edited by Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Maqsudul Hasan Nuri
Islamabad Policy Research Institute

Dr Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema is president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and has written several books and research articles on issues related to Pakistan
Dr Maqsudul Hasan Nuri is a visiting professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and is a freelance writer for different newspapers
Dr Zhang Li is a research professor of International Relations and director of the Centre for South
Asia-West China Cooperation & Development Studies, Siachuan University. He has many publications and presentations to his credit